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If nothing else, those two pages from the Restoration Specialties catalog show what a wide variety of clamps were used in the industry, back in the day.

That sure flies in the face of a judging standard that the AACA came up with, back in the early 1980s, mandating that all cars of a certain period - yet, regardless of brand - must have one particular style of adjustable hose clamp that they had settled on. That bit of foolishness was the beginning of the end of my interest in ever having a vehicle judged at an AACA show. However, I recently heard that they revised their position on that point.

Meanwhile, Randy mentioned discarded clamps. As a mechanic, who worked on many brands in addition to Packard, my dad naturally accumulated plenty of hardware from "take-offs". That included hose clamps, when customers requested new radiator hoses and clamps. Of course, worm-gear clamps went on, but the old clamps got tossed into a box under the workbench.

Thirty years ago, I was cleaning out my grandmother's garage, in preparation for an estate sale, and discovered a small box full of a variety of salvaged clamps. They got no interest when I set them out for sale at a local swap meet, but many years later, a fella was detailing a '50 Pontiac and asked me if I still had those clamps. When I brought out the box, he looked like one of Pavlov's dogs. Word quietly got around after that, and the best of those old clamps are all gone now.